274 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



ously on a thousand hills, that they have won a true place 

 among English evergreens. Though the whole of this 

 family of conifers is known as pines, within the family, 

 firs are distinguished from pines proper by the separate 

 growth of the needles, whereas pine-needles grow in tufts ; 

 and it is thus strictly correct to speak of the Scots pine, 

 and not of the Scots fir. The little bunches of needles 

 are a conspicuous feature of the boughs of an old pine, and 

 help to give it its clouded and mottled effect as seen against 

 the sky. The needles of the spruce fir are solitary, and are 

 arranged in a regular spiral on the twigs ; and this arrange- 

 ment, in addition to their comparative shortness and blunt- 

 ness, makes a young spruce the stiffest and primmest of all 

 the evergreens, and also makes it the most convenient of 

 little shrubs for decoration as a Christmas-tree. In the 

 silver fir, the needles stand out flatly on each side of the 

 spray, like the leaves of the yew which are themselves 

 almost needles ; and in the Austrian pine, which is the 

 commonest conifer in plantations next to the Scots pine 

 and spruce and larch, the needles are borne in pairs as in 

 the Scots pine. But the greater length of the needles, and 

 the denser growth of the tufts, makes an Austrian pine so 

 much coarser and blacker to the eye that it is easily dis- 

 tinguished. In the Corsican pine, which is another variety 

 of the Austrian, this blackness and density are less con- 

 spicuous ; but the Corsican pine, like the Weymouth pine, 

 with its large cones, so apt for Christmas fires, begins to 

 lead us away from the heath and open woodland into the 

 garden of exotics. 



Old spruces lose most of the primness and stiffness of 

 their youth, and sweep the ground with heavy down-curving 

 plumes which have a wild and melancholy beauty. Spruces 

 stand a wet soil better than the Scots pine or larch, and are 



